South Bank and more

Like other cities that don't have access to the sea, Brisbane has built a fake beach on its riverbank (Paris Plage and Berlin's Strandbars come to mind). But this one's the best I've seen yet - it's a real lagoon where you can actually swim (big enough so it's not too full, even now in the summer holidays), complete with toilets, changing rooms and lifeguards on duty! And the South Bank has even more to offer: In the past couple of days I visited the Gallery of Modern Art and saw the exhibition on Contemporary Australian Optimism, which was a lot of fun. Then I played my way through the history of videogames at the Queensland State Library - from Pong via Space Invaders and Pacman to the latest Wii games. I'm really impressed by how modern and interactive the museums etc here are (and mostly free, too). I also had a look in the Queensland Museum, which contains lots of totally different things (anything as long as it's got something to do with Queensland). I only had a look at the Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islanders part there - shocking to see what Europeans did to them on first arriving here.

I also did the hop-on-hop-off bustour (which was ok, highlight for me Mt Coot-tha, from which you have a great view over the city and the botanic gardens), went up and down the river by CityCat (I'll do more of that later...) and had the greatest veggie burger ever (even beats Queenstown's Ferg) at Grill'd. So, been quite busy in spite of the heat (I mainly go to the museums for their aircon ;-))

P.S.: The picture is Brisbane Center from the South Bank.